Right. Here goes. (I can't remember where I found the recipe, so this is what I do every time from memory of the original!)
Take 1 pheasant for every 2 people. Cut the whole pheasant in half down the backbone, easier than it sounds, I use a breadknife.
Wass the halves carefully, and pick out any splinters of bone which are around. This is a bit painstaking, but essential! Pat dry on kitchen roll.
Using a big pan on a fairly high heat, melt butter and add oil and brown the halved pheasant, two or four at a time, pretty thoroughly on both sides, then lay in a roasting dish, good side up.
Using the buttery oil juice left in the pan, fry up thinly sliced onions and add to the pheasant along with a big handfull of thyme or sage leaves, salt and pepper, and a big handful of dates. (Stone out, cut into 4 or whatever your preference.)
Deglaze the pan with a can of cider, add about a pint of chicken stock and pour over the pheasant. Add more liquid if required to bring it up to just over half way up the meat.
Cover the dish very tightly with tin foil, cook in the oven for about 2 hours on around 150, it should bubble very gently rather than boil furiously. (Check it every 40 minutes or so, to make sure the liquid level doesn't go below about half way up the meat.) By the end of the 2 hours you want the liquid to be about 2cms deep. Add about a pint of cream, shoogle it all about so that it mixes in well with the liquid, best achieved by shoving the pheasant around. Put it back in the oven for about 20 minutes, ideally a wee bit hotter as a nice bubble at this stage is required to reduce the creamy sauce.
Obviously everyone gets a half a pheasant, if you have an aga reducing the creamy sauce a bit while you're dishing up is a good idea. (Thicken it up with cornflour if it's too runny.) Pour a ladle of sauce with lots of onion and dates over the top.
I sprinkle it with freshly chopped thyme and serve it either with warm crusty bread or mashed potatoes.
I produced this one new year for about 16 friends, one of the husbands was completely enamoured of it. He announced that it was the nicest dish he had ever eaten, which went down incredibly badly with his wife!
Like I said, it's from memory of an excellent recipe, but seems to still work, I think it's the best way to eat pheasant! I'm feeling very hungry now!
Topic: Butchering (Read 7651 times)
